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Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

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Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#331

Post by thebean11 »

kortilla wrote: post #324
chrisseaton wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you still need to be at the very top of your field to get past that famous interview. It’s completely out of reach for all but the most elite engineers even if they’re already doing brilliantly somewhere else.

That’s completely false. The skills to get through the “famous interview” aren’t related to software engineering practices at all. Let that sink in. Their interview process is loaded with false negative and false positive rates, despite what they claim. If you don’t think they have false positives, just look at the poor quality of so many google products. An interview process that an algorithms/data structure obsesse…

> If you don’t think they have false positives, just look at the poor quality of so many google products.

I don't disagree with the point you're making, but that's a bad argument. Good engineers are capable of building a bad product if the conditions are right.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#332

Post by thebean11 »

kortilla wrote: post #160
chrisseaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does it cost to find and hire a Google-tier worker? Many hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you're talking about financial duty surely their duty is to retain the elite workers they've already got.

Given the market’s performance over the last 4 years, it’s most certainly cheaper to fire people who aren’t actively involved in any projects so Google gets the unvested stock back and then hire fresh at current stock price. Someone who was hired 2 years ago with 500k of stock vesting over 4 years could have enough unvested stock leftover to fund two employees RSU grants... Hiring google employees is still cheaper th…

I don't work for Google, but I think you're making bold assumptions about how much a year or two of domain knowledge is worth to Google compared to a couple hundred k of stock.

If these employees are transitioning to wildly different roles within the company maybe the math changes a bit, but I'm not sure how much.

Edit: not to mention the trust erosion aspect. If I see people getting laid off cause their stock has appreciated, am I going to stay? Basically means stock appreciation is capped. People wouldn't take kindly to that.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#333

Post by kortilla »

thebean11 wrote: post #332
kortilla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the market’s performance over the last 4 years, it’s most certainly cheaper to fire people who aren’t actively involved in any projects so Google gets the unvested stock back and then hire fresh at current stock price. Someone who was hired 2 years ago with 500k of stock vesting over 4 years could have enough unvested stock leftover to fund two employees RSU grants... Hiring google employees is still cheaper th…

I don't work for Google, but I think you're making bold assumptions about how much a year or two of domain knowledge is worth to Google compared to a couple hundred k of stock. If these employees are transitioning to wildly different roles within the company maybe the math changes a bit, but I'm not sure how much. Edit: not to mention the trust erosion aspect. If I see people getting laid off cause their stock has ap…

> don't work for Google, but I think you're making bold assumptions about how much a year or two of domain knowledge is worth to Google compared to a couple hundred k of stock.

I did. Google is so large the vast majority of engineers contain domain knowledge that is mainly just useful to their group. And if their group is undergoing layoffs, their domain knowledge isn’t too useful.

About the only useful things that a long-time googler will know when joining a new group over a noogler is the test infra and code review process.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#334

Post by thoughtexprmnt »

dustinmoris wrote: post #298
coldtea wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My team have chosen Google Cloud Why though? AWS, Azure etc all look much more competent and friendlier to customers, and without Google's history of killing services they don't care for anymore...

Azure is not competent or customer friendly at all. I've been using Azure on and off since its very first days and despite me telling every client that they're better off by using AWS or GCP because it will cause their dev teams less headache, and cost them overall a lot less in engineering cost (time spent by their engineers fighting with Azure instead of building a product) there's still every so often a non techni…

Not discounting your experience, but we have clients in all three, and our own experience is that Azure support and service is _significantly_ better than AWS and GCP, to the degree that we primarily recommend Azure for that reason.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#335

Post by manigandham »

PedroBatista wrote: post #269
manigandham wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company keeps track to make sure people take off the minimum amount. After that take off as much as you need. I don’t keep track but I’ve taken off a day every other week for months. Comes down to company culture and how healthy and focused it is.

It also keeps track of the “maximum amount”. Don’t fool yourself :)

Obviously there are reasonable requests and making sure you get your work done, but the last two companies have been my own startups and we have no hard limit.

If you have one where you work then it looks like it's a culture issue, as I've been saying.

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